Mr. P.J. Ryan:

A lot of top-tier contractors are starting to use battery energy storage systems with generators. A lot of sites do not have access to electrical power on site, so they are using generators. Traditionally, there would be a generator running for pretty much the whole day. A lot of the time it would only be idling, because there is no actual load on it, but it would be still running to run the site offices and so on. With the battery energy storage systems, we are seeing developments like, for example, one of undertaken by one of our members with Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council whereby they had the generator running for only two hours during the day and it charged the battery. It was running 100 kW cranes and everything on the site. That is really good because it is not only reducing emissions but also noise pollution and air pollution in the area. As we said in our budget submission, incentivising that type of equipment would be really helpful. When running that generator for those few hours is combined with hydrotreated vegetable oil, HVO, that is really dropping down the emissions.